


Placeholder Title Until I Can Come Up With Something Better Later

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-25
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 10:14:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1017380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bobby Singer sends Sam and Dean to a small desert town to look for information on a demon. On the way there, they hear a favorite radio personality, who is also their contact. Shenanigans ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Placeholder Title Until I Can Come Up With Something Better Later

“Where are we headed to again?” Sam asked as dawn broke over the mountains. Dean had shut off AC/DC a half hour ago, and Sam had been dozing since. He rubbed his face.  
“Podunk town in Bumfuck Nowhere, California.” Dean smiled and rolled his window down. Sam pulled his jacket tighter around himself when the cold air breezed in.  
“Right. And what’s with the radio he gave us?”  
“CB radio. Get different frequencies than the car radio. Guy down there has a frequency for hunters, Bobby think he might be able to help us out.” Dean reached down and turned the radio on. Sam turned it down after both of them flinched when “Back In Black” roared through the speakers. Dean immediately turned it back up a few notches, and Sam left it.  
“He give you a name?”  
“Yeah. Guy’s named Cecil, of all thing. Who the hell names their kid ‘Cecil’? Sounds like some sort of edible plant,” Dean grumbled. Sam chuckled. “Should be there by tonight, though. Guess Bumfuck Nowhere has some sort of motel too, Bobby said to just ask around for a place to stay.”  
“Great. At least there’ll be real beds.”  
“I hope. Could just be a barn or something.”  
“Nobody puts guests in the barn, Dean. That was, like, a biblical thing. Or a hobo thing.”  
“We’re basically hobos, you do know that, right?”  
“Last I checked there was a Great Depression when there were hobos. Also last I checked, we aren’t in the Great Depression.”  
“Last I checked,” Dean replied, waving one hand in the air in what was probably supposed to be a snooty manner, “we didn’t have more than twenty bucks between us. That qualifies as a great depression if I’ve ever heard of one, bitch.”  
“Jerk.” Sam rolled his eyes and cranked his window down. Dean turned AC/DC up to its original levels.  


+++

  
“Hello, listeners. I’m Cecil, for those of you who are new to the area. I have been informed of two visitors on their way to our small town, the sons of the well-known hunter John Winchester. I have also heard that they wish to visit me later, and listeners, let me tell you, the taller of them has hair nearly as beautiful as Carlos’s, although it is nowhere near as perfect. According to the man that sent them, I may have information to assist them in their hunt for the demon that killed their family.  
“In other news, Old Woman Josie says that the angels have visited her, and that one of them helped her change a light bulb on her front porch. She will be selling the lightbulb tomorrow, with bids beginning at twenty dollars. It was the black angel, if that sweetens the pot for anyone.  
“The hooded figures have recently gained a new member, who looks suspiciously like an angel. I have no confirmation from anyone, but I’m pretty sure I saw wings earlier today when Carlos tried to talk to him. Doesn’t it seem odd, listeners, that an angel should attempt to masquerade itself as a hooded figure?  
“Dear listeners, Carlos and I are going on another date tomorrow! I’m so excited. We’re going to Big Rico’s, which, as you all know, serves the best pizza in town, mostly because it is the only place to get pizza in town! I just love Big Rico’s!  
“Tonight, after the weather, will be three hours of the nightly news, then four hours of opera, and then community radio will resume once again! Have a good night, listeners, and remember, you are no more than a speck floating through void, clinging to the surface of a rock with a negligible amount of force. You are lucky to have been here, listeners, instead of somewhere else.  
“I give to you, [the weather](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tfw8SqeFEE).”  


+++

  
“You thought that was weird too, right?” Dean asked once the broadcast had finished. They were sitting in the Impala outside a greasy spoon on the Arizona border. Sam had turned on the radio and tuned it to the frequency Bobby had specified at 8:30, and they had been rewarded with fifteen minutes’ rambling by a man calling himself Cecil who seemed to have an uncanny knowledge of things he shouldn’t have and seemed overeager to throw in corporate sponsorships.  
“Definitely weird,” Sam agreed.  
“Glad we’re on the same page. And Bobby trusts this guy?”  
“Looks like.” Sam clicked the radio off as the weather - which, it turned out, had been a song without any reference to any sort of weather, good or bad - finished. “You wanna hear the local news?”  
“I think I got enough local news outta that broadcast.” Dean grimaced and stuffed his empty burger wrapper in the greasy paper bag along with his empty fry container and Sam’s chicken sandwich wrapper. He took one last slurp of his Coke and stuffed that in the bag too. He nudged it toward Sam, who dropped his empty cup in as well. “You ready to go meet Cecil?”  
“Not sure I am. Guy sounds weird.”  
“No weirder than you were when you were a kid.” Dean laughed as Sam punched his shoulder.  
“Jerk.”  
“Bitch. No, but really, he sounds kinda weird, but at least it’s the harmless kind of weird. You can hear the crazies from miles away, and he ain’t one of ‘em.”  
“How can you tell?”  
“Guy believes in angels, and he believes that old lady saw them. Humans who believe in angels don’t murder people. Also, boyfriend. You think a dude with a boyfriend is actually some sort of evil mastermind?”  
“Could be a ploy to hide his real motivations,” Sam suggested, with a smile and a shrug.  
“Yeah, right. He sounds so deceptive.” Dean rolled his eyes. “Bobby trusts him, and for now that’s good enough for me. Be ready when we meet him, but don’t be obvious about it.”  
“Right, Dean, I’m going to go in and shoot him. He’s probably just a psychic or something.”  
“I hope he’s just a psychic,” Dean grumbled, and put the car in gear.  


+++

  
“This is the address Bobby gave us for the guy.”  
Dean and Sam stood in front of a huge old house that was beginning to list dangerously to one side. There were a dozen very obvious wards against evil on the front sidewalk alone, and another half dozen visible on the front porch on top of that.  
“Looks like he’s well-prepared. Don’t have to worry about demons here.” Dean began up the sidewalk, walking carefully around the spray-painted symbols. Sam followed, doing the same. They had reached the bottom of the steps when the front door was flung open and two people stepped out - an old woman wrapped in a lavender-ish shawl and a young hispanic man with hair pulled back in a ponytail. Both had shotguns pointed directly at the Winchesters.  
“You the guys Cecil was talking about?” the old woman demanded.  
‘“Yes ma’am,” Sam replied, holding his hands up. “Sam and Dean Winchester. Bobby Singer sent us.”  
“Yeah, I figured that. Let’s see some ID. Real ID, too, I know you’re hunters and you’ve got a dozen fake IDs in your trunk. Take ‘em out, throw ‘em up here.”  
Sam and Dean both reached into their pockets and pulled out their wallets.  
“Real driver’s licenses in the back,” Dean told the old woman as he threw his to her.  
“Carlos, dear, you check them out.” The old woman waved her shotgun at the wallets, eyes still glued to the Winchesters, who had raised their hands above their heads again. The young hispanic man - Carlos, both Winchesters named him - leaned down to pick up the wallets. He flipped through them until he found the licenses, and looked at both of them. He moved his glasses up to his forehead and squinted at them.  
“They’re real, from what I can tell,” Carlos told the old woman. “Could be really good fakes.”  
“I’ll trust you that they’re real, dear. You’ve got an eye for it. You boys come in, but leave all your weapons on the table by the door. Cecil doesn’t appreciate weapons in the house, but we’ve convinced him to let us keep them by the front door.”  
Carlos put the licenses back in the wallets, and handed them back to the Winchesters as they walked past, into the house, the old woman behind them. He eyed them suspiciously.  
The front hallway was shabby, but well-kept. The carpets were threadbare, the wallpaper was faded, the furniture had nicks and scratches, but everything was clean and nothing smelled musty. The old woman and Carlos behind her ushered Sam and Dean into the kitchen at the end of the hallway.  
There was a man standing there - tall, blond, maybe a bit more weight around his middle than was entirely healthy, fingers long and square as he poured water into the coffee maker, which wheezed when he flipped the switch to turn it on. He was wearing a yellow tank top over a lime-green long-sleeved shirt, and both Dean and Sam had to blink a few times before their eyes adjusted. When he turned around, Dean saw he had been wrong about a couple things - he had brown hair, didn’t he, light, sure, but definitely brown, and he was skinny as a rail. It must’ve just been the way his clothes hung off of him.  
“Oh! Are these the Winchesters?” The voice was undeniably that of Cecil From the Radio. “You are very different than I expected, although you do have beautiful hair.” Cecil squinted up at Sam. Dean blinked, and while he was momentarily certain Cecil had not had glasses a fraction of a second before, he did now, and after a second of turning this over, Dean decided he must not have noticed them the first time.  
“Uh, thanks,” Sam replied, reaching up to push his hair off his forehead.  
“It’s very true, though, there’s no need to thank me. Would you like coffee?” Cecil beamed and gestured to the coffeepot,which was full.  
“No thank you,” Dean and Sam both mumbled. “We just need to ask you a few questions, and then we’ll be off.”  
“You’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like. I promise, our town is very pleasant this time of year. The city council would love it if you stayed around for a little bit. The tourist trade has really declined in the last few years, which is unfortunate, because it really is so beautiful around here.”  
“It really is,” Sam echoed dutifully, beginning to realize, with a growing feeling of dread, that this was a man who liked to talk. “Maybe we can stick around for a few days, see a few local sights. It’s not like we really need to be somewhere else.” Sam jabbed Dean in the ribs with an elbow when he started to protest.  
“Uh, yeah. I guess we can,” Dean agreed, glaring at Sam.  
“Oh, that’s great. Do you need a place to stay? We have lots of empty rooms here. There was a family upstairs, but they moved out a couple months ago, after their daughter died and they wanted to make a fresh start. It’s really a shame.”  
“How did she die?” Sam asked.  
“She was mauled by a vampire. The Secret Police took care of him - it’s just not civilized. We offered to bring her back through the proper channels - you know, bloodstone circle, sacrifice of her killer, DNA samples taken from both parents, but her parents refused. She was such a nice girl too. Would have made a good intern up at the radio station. I guess that’s how it goes, though.” Cecil shrugged.  
Sam and Dean looked at each other.  
“Yeah, it ... it really is a shame,” Dean offered. “Do you mind if we bring our stuff in and go settle into a room? We’ll only be here a couple days, but we’ve been, you know, driving all day. Gotta sleep sometime.”  
“Oh, of course! Would you like any help with your things?”  
“We should be good, thanks.”  
“Oh, it’s no trouble. I can show you up to the room.” Cecil picked up a mug of coffee and grinned at the Winchesters over it. Sam wasn’t sure when he had poured it - he had been several feet away from the coffeemaker for the entirety of the conversation.  
“Uh, sure. Thanks. We’ll go get our stuff.” Sam and Dean both backed away quickly. Carlos and the old woman watched them with smiles.  
“They’re doomed.” The old woman shook her head.  
“Bobby assured me they were very capable, even if their ways aren’t like ours. No one is perfect.” Cecil blew on his coffee.  
“It is really unnerving first time you hear about the weirdness.”  
“It’s not weird, Carlos. It’s perfectly normal. You should know that by now.”  
Carlos grinned at Cecil, who smiled back.  
“And anyway, we need their help as much as we need theirs. I’m sure they’ve seen stranger things than our little town.”  
“You’re going to have to hope. Remember last time hunters came through here?”  
“Yes, and we don’t need a repeat. So you two keep all your tentacles to yourselves.”  
The old woman and Carlos both gave Cecil flat looks. Cecil grinned a little wider.  


+++

  
“We did not sign up for this. There is definitely something weird about them.”  
“I know. But if Bobby trusts them, I’m willing to. Cecil seems...nice, I guess. I mean, yeah, there’s something really off about him, but he can’t be a demon, not behind all those devil’s traps. There were wards in there I’ve never seen before, so I’ll bet he’s probably okay.”  
“Could still be a shapeshifter, or a vampire, or something worse.”  
“Whatever he is, he’s probably wondering where we are. Let’s go. We can talk later.” Sam lifted his duffel bag out of the trunk and threw it over his shoulder. Dean picked his up and did the same. He slammed the trunk closed, and glanced up the street before heading up the sidewalk behind Sam.  
Half a block down - at the corner, next to the stop sign - five people were standing. They were all wearing long robes with hoods pulled over their faces. the robes varied in appearance - two were black, but one of them was hot pink, another grey with lemon yellow polka dots, and the last one was red and white striped. The hoods turned to follow Dean as he walked up the sidewalk.  
“Sam, we’re being watched by those people in the robes.”  
“Just keep walking. We’re almost to the door and they’re half a block away.”  
Dean closed the door quickly once they were inside. Cecil was standing just inside the door, uncomfortably close.  
“There’s, uh, there’s a couple guys standing down on the corner. Long robes. One of ‘em looks like a candy cane. They usually there?”  
“Oh, them? Those are just the Hooded Figures, they shouldn’t bother you.” Cecil waved his hand. “Probably,” he amended, furrowing his brow. “There wasn’t one with blue dots stuck on it, was there?”  
“Uh, no.”  
Cecil visibly relaxed. “You’ll be alright then. Follow me upstairs.”  
Sam and Dean followed Cecil upstairs. Sometime while they had been outside, his glasses had turned from thick-rimmed reading glasses to narrow-rimmed half-moons. Dean also suspected his hair had gotten longer, but he wasn’t going to say anything until he was absolutely sure. He pulled out his cellphone and surreptitiously took a picture while Cecil gushed about the spiral staircase to Sam. Sam nodded along politely.  
“This used to be their apartment,” Cecil explained. “They left and nobody’s moved in up here since. Carlos, Josie, and I live downstairs, in the back rooms, so you don’t need to worry about bothering us. If you need anything, just come ask. Josie says the angels like you, so I’m sure she or the angels would be happy to get you anything you want. How long will you be staying around? You should stay the week! It’s the boy scout initiation ceremony on sunday, and you’ll want to see that. It’s a point of civic pride.”  
“Uh, thanks. We’ll think about it.” Sam stepped into the room at the top of the stairs and looked around. The walls were neatly painted with wards. Underneath them was faded wallpaper identical to that in the entryway and stairwell. Sam was beginning to suspect it was the only kind of wallpaper in the entire house.  
“Yeah, definitely,” Dean agreed, stepping into the room behind Sam and giving the room the same once-over. He threw his duffel bag on the bed closer to the door. Sam set his on the other bed, and craned his neck up to look at the ceiling. It was also warded. “Hey, when are you busy tomorrow?”  
“Well, I do my show from seven to seven thirty every weeknight, and I do the ritual keening to station management for three hours before that, but I’m free the rest of the day. I’m sure Carlos and Old Woman Josie would be more than willing to speak to you while I can’t.” Cecil leaned in the doorway in a way that might have had the potential to be cool, but instead looked dumb, with his purple yoga pants and white button-up shirt and too-big gold vest. “We can figure it out tomorrow morning - it’s late, and if you’re going to be around town tomorrow, you’ll want to be at the top of your game.”  
“Uh, thanks. We’ll be up early tomorrow.”  
“Oh, good! So will Carlos. Did you know he always gets up early, even when he doesn’t have to go to work? He says it keeps him healthy while living here, but it’s not like he really needs it.He’s already perfect.”  
“He, uh, he sounds a lot like Sam. Likes to get up early and all.” Dean made a noncommittal handwave in Sam’s direction. Sam grimaced.  
“Oh, good! I hope you’ll both get along!” Cecil beamed, and Dean knew that he had not had pointed teeth ten seconds ago.  
He was some sort of shapeshifter, then. Mostly benevolent, it looked like, but there was no guarantee he had always been this nice, or if he would stay this nice.  
“Uh, yeah.” Sam agreed. “We should really, uh, be going to sleep now.”  
“Of course, of course. I’ll leave you be.” Cecil smiled again - no pointy teeth this time - and gently closed the door. The Winchesters waited until they heard his footsteps retreat down the stairs.  
“Alright. Definitely a shapeshifter of some sort. Dude did not have pointy teeth earlier. You saw those too, right?”  
“Yeah, I did. You got a picture of him?”  
“Yeah. You?”  
“Yeah.” Sam held out his phone to Dean, and Dean did the same to Sam.  
“Definitely not the same guy,” Sam sighed. “Mine was wearing purple pants and a god-awful lime green shirt.”  
“I just took my picture in the hallway.”  
“And that’s not what he was wearing just now.”  
“What sort of shapeshifter you think we’re dealing with?”  
“A good one, for sure. He’s good, that we didn’t even notice.”  
“No shit. I don’t know if we’ve faced one of these before - he’s not leaving skins everywhere. He’s not a normal shapeshifter - don’t know if silver will hurt him. We’ll have to test it.”  
“Before we do that, let’s see if he can help us with the demon. We don’t want to kill our one source of information.”  
“No shit. Go to sleep. Have fun talking to Carlos tomorrow morning.” Dean smirked. “I’ve heard he’s positively dreamy.”  
“Shut up, jerk,” Sam laughed. He threw his pillow at Dean, who caught it and whipped it back in one smooth motion.  
“Bitch,” Dean replied. “You’re just scared because he’s just so beautiful.”  
“Shut up.” Sam flopped back on his bed, still laughing. “Go to bed. I’ll get you up tomorrow when it’s time to leave.”  
“Thanks. I’ll probably be up early, poke around the house some. Get friendly with the old lady and Cecil.”  
“Shouldn’t be hard. Old ladies just love you and Cecil was totally checking you out.”  
“Goddamn. What’s the ugliest thing I own?” Dean moaned.  
“You think ugly is going to stop him?”  
Dean groaned. 


End file.
